


The Candy Pump

by lantadyme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-16
Updated: 2012-08-16
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lantadyme/pseuds/lantadyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them have ever been trick-or-treating before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Candy Pump

You go to the 24 hour drug store down the block from your apartment at three in the morning. You in orange basketball shorts and flip flops and a black wifebeater. Calliope in a kids' size black hoodie over a yellow polkadot sundress, black leggings on underneath and oversized fuzzy slippers to hide her feet. She shoves her hands in her pockets, pulls the hood up over her green skull. It's a hundred degrees in late October and she sticks out like a sore thumb, but you don't care. She looks cute in the dress.

The cashier is all but asleep behind the counter, feet up and a tiny flatscreen blaring tinny American Idol reruns. The air conditioning is heavenly. You and Calliope press into the center of the store, searching for the really shitty prepackaged snack food that's sandwiched between overpriced children's toys produced for pennies in China and gallons of low-end hair products you would never hazard your anime locks to try. All the Halloween stuff is piled high in the middle of everything, and as you walk past with your shoes snapping, Calliope stops in front of a rack full of devil's horns and hums under her breath. 

"Have you ever trick-or-treated, Dirk? My research seems to portray it as quite the American holiday."

You stop. You've got a bag of Doritos in one hand as you turn around and look at her. Her eyes glitter like a distant star, her smile nearly as bright. You are nineteen years old. You have lived fifteen of those years without seeing a single other person in the flesh. No, you've never trick-or-treated. 

"Are you serious?" you ask her.

She laughs and claps her hands together, green flesh stark against the normalcy of fluorescent bulbs shining on the dirty white floor tiles. Her slippers scuff as she walks over to you. "Oh come now, it would be fun! Free candy? Heavens, I have not put on my troll makeup in ages. And you have plenty of interesting outfits in the back of your closet. I have seen them!" 

Those aren't exactly the kinds of things you can wear in public if you want your record to stay free of indecent exposure charges. But she knows that. She's just giving you shit. You try to imagine Calliope scampering around in the dark ringing doorbells. It doesn't quite run congruent to the image of the all-powerful Muse of Space floating in hard vacuum in her goddess duds. But then again, you run a puppet porn site and also manage to enjoy watching My Little Pony for the characters, despite the hideous fandom. "You really want to trick-or-treat?"

She nods, shrugging as her eyes stray back to the mass-produced costumes hung on the shelves. "Not with any of this rubbish, but it would be a fun experience. Although I would rather not go alone." 

You're not good at social situations. Every three weeks when you take the bus to your university for the testing you can't take online, you come home exhausted and paranoid. But this is different. An isolated weird night of distilled fantasy the entire country partakes in? It could be fun.

You shrug. "Okay, but we only have a week to get our shit together for costumes."

Calliope grins. "I knew you would be game."

\------

Aforementioned week later, you barge in to find Calliope sitting in your bathroom sink, her bare green legs folded in the bowl as she leans in close to the mirror to put on her makeup. Her hypercube galaxy suit is neatly hung up in your closet, cast off for the nostalgic green replica that's laid over the back of your futon, waiting for her to pull it on. All she's got on right now is a white dress shirt cut for her size, cute little green snakes twining together on the print of her boyshort underwear. She taps grey paint on her face with a sponge applicator, making concentration expressions at herself in the mirror. You're still not sure if the enlarged size of her eyes will freak people out or if they'll go with the weirdness for one night, but you figure she can space-warp in a moment if anyone starts shrieking "ALIEN" while pointing in your direction.

"Quit taking up the whole mirror," you tell her, stepping up behind her to catch a glimpse of yourself. She grins and rolls her eyes, but she does nudge out of your way a bit. "Have to put this damn wig on."

It's a technicolor rainbow wig, styled to match your favorite pony. The little pastel blue horse ears that poke up through the top are light-weight robotics covered in soft cloth, queued to a handful of expressions you can trigger through an interface in your shades. You pull the wig on and settle it over your poor hair. But the ruined hairstyle is worth it for a fun night. 

Calliope pauses in applying her makeup long enough to watch you go through a quick preliminary rundown of the ear interface. You tip them forward and growl at her reflection in the mirror—angry pony. 

She laughs, reaches up to adjust the wig a little on your head for the perfect fit. "Are you sure you do not want the blue makeup? I am very experienced in applying it!"

"Fuck no. The air's as hot as my blood outside. There's no way I'm sweating through grease paint."

"Well you look darling either way," she tells you, one leg dangling off the side of the sink as she gives you the once over: Plain white 20% Cooler tee with a shitty pastel blue jacket over it, sleeves ripped off, wings stitched to the shoulder blades, collar popped to the heavens. Knee length baggy shorts to match the vest. Rainbow belt with an expensive rainbow horse tail looped through the back of it. Rainbow striped socks pulled up to your knees, pastel blue converse with corresponding cutie mark on the heels, rainbow laces. 

If you're going to do a ridiculous costume of a pony from a little girls' cartoon, you are going to go all out. It's basically required of you considering the code you live by. And it's damn fun.

"Soon as you're done, we can go," you tell her, and she nods. Her face is mostly grey by this point, long green lashes, stunningly gorgeous green eyes. 

"Be a dear and hand me my wig then?" 

You do and she puts it on like she's an expert, like she's done it a thousand times. A part of you imagines her years ago, hovering over her computer in full makeup and talking to you for hours in her cell of a living space, weaving a fantasy for herself if only to stifle the loneliness a little. Halloween suits her. One night to live something you don't get to live any other time. You feel iffy about it, but you figure that as long as you have Calliope at your side, you'll get to see it through her eyes at least a little.

You leave her to her makeup and go sit on the futon, flipping through channels as you wait.

Ten minutes later she stalks out with her face immaculate, her wig and the horns in place. A green caduceus tie in a double Windsor knot and her grey gloves on. In her hands is a metal cleaning bucket with a tiny pumpkin on it—for the irony, she'd said, and you'd approved—ready for all her sweet candy loot. You kill the television as she slips into her trousers and does up the buttons of her tails coat. Her shoes are white like her tongue. 

"Damn, this is nostalgic," you say. You hand her a pair of aviators that she slips into an inner pocket, just in case too many people start staring at her eyes.

Calliope laughs to herself, smoothing out any remaining wrinkles. She looks like a four foot replica of Calmasis. With horns. It's eerie even years after the game. "Yes it is. Are you ready, pony boy?"

"Hell yes."

"Hell fucking yes!"

The two of you bump fists.

\------

You take the bus to a nicer side of town, Calliope swinging her short legs on the seat next to you and peering at the other passengers through her Dave Strider shades. The sun's going down, painting the sky orange and red. You get off where it's not apartments as far as the eye can see. A nice little neighborhood with two-flats and bungalows, lined with trees that have somehow held onto their leaves despite the brutally long summer this year. It's just over ninety degrees. You are sweating with all your layers, but the research you've done pegs this as the best place to get actually decent candy on a neighborhood run. Calliope grins at you with her green teeth, excited, and you smile back.

"Okay, so anyone asks? You're my little sister or some shit."

"My, you look nothing like my brother," she tells you with the driest tone, entirely unimpressed. You wince a little even though you know she's playing. You'd really rather not stand on the same tier as Caliborn, (Satan torment his gutterfucking soul).

"My niece, then. Better?"

"Yes, yes," she tells you, waving it off pleasantly as she slips her shades back into her pocket. "I am sure there will be no drastic problems, Dirk. You need to learn to relax." 

You make an effort.

Everything's decorated in disgusting spider-webs and cheesecloth ghosts and rubber bats hanging from the branches. Fake tombstones punch up through the lawns, audio-recorded witches cackling from nowhere and jack-o-lanterns glittering on doorsteps. The two of you hit a few houses, Calliope batting your hands away and standing on her tiptoes to reach the doorbells. 

She smiles and says, "Trick or treat!" Three different people compliment her suit, and she thanks them far more eloquently than they were expecting. "Why yes, I have read Complacency of the Learned, and enjoyed it quite a bit! The relationships therein were fascinating to unpack." They probably think she's about six up until she breaks out the Oxford dictionary words, which is likely half the reason they give her twice the candy they give you, even though you say thanks too. 

In the back of your mind the phrase _push button, receive bacon_ keeps repeating over and over, but you honestly do see the appeal here. It's not about the candy so much about the turning over of society. Any other night, coming to someone's house and demanding things would end with a call to the cops or a child abduction case all over the news. Tonight children are running everywhere, Wolverine and angels and pirates and Batman, kids in pretty princess dresses or decked out as ninjas, some in costumes even more weird. 

(About seven little girls see you and grin ear to ear. Two of them wave. You smile back, flick your pony ears, drop a few pony puns to the one who creeps up and talks to you. The reactions are adorable. Even the Machiavellian ninja pornographer's heart isn't made of stone.)

Or maybe Halloween is about the candy because Calliope crams an entire Snickers bar in her mouth in one go as soon as the two of you are far enough away from the house that gave it to her. You stare a little. The responder tips your ears into a confused expression and Calliope giggles around her mouthful. 

"I live on a diet of sugar and poisonous chemicals! All your various forms of sweets are quite a thing to behold. And delicious!"

"Okay, but your table manners are whack," you tell her, as if you had any inkling of table etiquette before Jane drilled it into your skull. You like candy, but not that much. When she's not looking you slip one of your fun-size Snickers into her bucket. 

The two of you stay out until midnight, when the streets are dark and the kids Calliope's height start to get less common. You pile back onto the bus and head home, and when you climb up all those stairs back to your apartment, the two of you dump all your candy out on the puppet-strewn floor in front of the futon and trade it. She slips you her hard candy in exchange for chocolate. And you could go down the street and buy her all the chocolate she could ever want, but the fun of Halloween is in the experience not the reward.


End file.
